At the very least, everyone has probably heard the name of the fourth Earl of Sandwich (born John Montagu), the British statesman whose name is forever affixed to our favorite lunchtime staple. What people may not know is that the foundations of this comfort food were laid long before the Earl's time.

A couple of years ago, we took our inevitable Thanksgiving leftovers and pressed them into an incredible panini. Between those two toasted, crusty pieces of bread, the flavors of roast turkey, sugary-tart cranberry sauce, sweet and savory cornbread stuffing, and rich gravy combined into a killer sandwich that captured all the comforts of the holiday in one bite.

The burger, America’s quintessential comfort food, can now be enjoyed in an impossibly endless number of ways. There are round-the-clock burgers at 24-hour-roadside joints and ephemeral late-night burgers sold out in mere minutes; burgers grilled in hundred-year-old cast-iron broilers and burgers steamed in state-of-the-art ovens, and many others.